


Of Fauns and Cabbages

by therecognitionscene



Series: Fauns and Veterans [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Fauns, Fawnlock, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-24 13:45:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2583503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therecognitionscene/pseuds/therecognitionscene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little bit of fawnlock!severich for the masses, with Severin Moran as a big dorky veteran who loves gardening more than people, and little faun babe Richard who just wants to munch on cabbages.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Of Gardens and Visitors

After three separate tours and an IED that had almost taken off a leg, Severin Moran believes he deserves some damned peace and quiet.

Sure, a little cottage out in the countryside is a far cry from a sun-soaked, sand-battered tent, but when he goes out to view the property with an over-eager real-estate lady wearing lipstick redder than the flames of Hell, he falls in love with it immediately. It's nestled on the edge of the woods, built of stone and covered in twirling strands of ivy with just enough cozy room for one veteran bachelor. Out back, there's even a bare patch of ground laid out for a garden, and Severin's mind immediately turns to thoughts of carrots and zucchinis and tomatoes. Hell, maybe even a few little patches of pansies, if he’s got some room left over. 

And isn’t that a joke in and of itself? A year ago, he would have laughed at the idea of doing something so civilian and menial as tending to a garden. 

It isn't until the woman is reaching out and touching his arm that he leaves his thoughts and snaps back to the present.

"So what do you think, Mr. Moran?" She asks with an obnoxiously wide smile, her hand lingering on his shoulder for longer than really necessary; she’s been doing that sort of thing all day, and whether or not she’s actually attracted to him or is simply trying to win him over so he’ll buy the house is neither here nor there. Her cloying laugh and simpering ways are getting on his nerves. But Severin is so pleased with the property--and his visions of lazy summer days digging in the fresh dirt and lounging around by his blooming garden--that he only returns the smile with a crooked one of his own.

"I think you've found yourself a buyer, Ms. Jones.”

\----------

He’s moved in by the end of that spring, after his physical therapy sessions have run their course and he’s deemed well enough to live on his own again, and when summer hits its stride, Severin considers himself the happiest man alive. Sure, he still has nightmares some nights: wakes up in a cold sweat with the taste of blood in his mouth as remembered explosions ring loudly in his ears; his leg always aches something terrible then, shooting pains lacing through the wounded muscle until he gets up and walks it out. 

But he finds that the bad dreams don’t bother him as much anymore because, as he’s limping around in the middle of the night to calm his traumatized body back down, he’s surrounded by the beauty of his new home. The woods are alive with all sorts of nocturnal noises that hum and trill in his head when he steps outside, life moving on around him at the same pace as always. He feels like he’s been granted some sort of special privilege in being able to experience that nightly show, like he’s been let in on some divine secret of nature every time he sits by the tree-line and just takes it all in, and it never fails to wash away the imagined dust of battle and death from his body.

During the day he does indeed busy himself with tending to his garden. He dons a wide-brimmed floppy sunhat without shame—after all, who’s there to see him?—and settles himself on his knees in the cool, rich earth of his garden. Each day his plants look healthier and happier, and he oftentimes finds himself talking to them, or even singing an old childhood tune to them as he picks off old leaves and sprinkles them with water from his big old watering can. The first time he pops a sun-ripened cherry tomato into his mouth, he’s beyond ecstatic at the sweet taste and the bountiful fruits of his labor, and rewards everyone with an extra sprinkle of fertilizer the next day.

When he’s not cultivating his green thumb, he wiles away the hours with stacks and stacks of books. There’s a soft mossy spot under a large tree just beyond the border of his garden that serves as the most perfect little reading nook. Though, truth be told, he usually can’t get past more than a few pages before he falls asleep, the book laying open on his face as he snores lightly in the mid-afternoon heat. 

Every once in a while he’ll even limp the short distance to the nearby town to do a bit of shopping—a pension isn’t a lot to live off of, but with his new simple lifestyle, it’s more than enough—or to stop by the local pub for a touch of comradery. Those days and nights are fun: filled with ale and old stories of glory and heroism, maybe even a flirtatious word shared with a bar maid or two. But at the end of it, Severin is happy to be back home again, nestled up snugly in his solitary little cocoon with his overstuffed armchair and a cool glass of iced tea.

Just, as he’s quickly discovered, how he likes it.

\---------

One particularly hot summer night, closer to dawn than anything else, he finds himself startling awake from another nightmare, cold sweat pouring down his body and making him shiver despite the muggy heat. He disentangles himself from his damp sheets and swings his legs over the side of the bed, one hand scrubbing at his bearded face as the other starts to massage his aching leg. The night is quiet and peaceful, the soothing sounds of crickets and frogs from the nearby pond drifting in through the open window; a stark contrast to the drone of fighter jets and the screams of civilians that had just been filling his dreams. 

With a sigh and a muttered curse he lifts himself off the bed and hobbles over to the window, leaning on the windowsill and sticking his head outside. The sky is just starting to lighten, more of a murky grey than the typical black of night. There’s a light breeze wafting the earthy, subtly sweet scent of still-warm dirt from his garden towards him, and he draws in a deep, calming breath as his heart rate starts to settle back down.

“What a fuckin’ mess you are, Severin Moran,” he murmurs to himself, looking out across his little yard to his treasured garden. His mind soon starts to drift to thoughts of the upcoming harvest season as his eyes drag lazily across the moonlit scene. His bean plants are coming in nicely, as are his cabbages, and tomorrow he’s going to—

There’s a slight movement in the shadows, and Severin blinks his eyes a few times as he tries to focus in on the inky shape. Is he imagining it? Truth be told, he’s probably going to be due a pair of glasses sometime soon. But no… No, the longer he looks at it, the more sure he is that there’s something there. Probably some animal who was rooting around for a meal and just now sensed his presence. 

“It’s alright, little thing,” he calls out softly. “There’s plenty there; help yourself.”

The shape stays still for a moment after, as if it actually was listening to him, and then it scampers away into the darker shadows of the woods. Severin watches for a long while after as the sun starts to rise slowly in the east, waiting to see if it would return, but when his watch proves fruitless he finally turns around to limp back to bed, a small smile on his face.

It’s sort of nice, knowing he has little visitors.

\------------

The next morning, he trudges out to his backyard, the dew of the morning still cool and shining on the grass. He inspects the small fence around his garden but can find no holes or patches where any animal could have slipped through. He hums in thought, scratching at his whiskers as he undoes the fence and steps inside. Maybe whatever it was had jumped over the netting, though it hadn’t seemed all that big the night before. 

When he makes his daily rounds to each of his plants, he finds a little hole dug up in his cabbage row. Seems that whatever had been there had taken a cabbage with it and left behind nothing but upturned soil. Severin simply pops another seed in and resettles the dirt before moving on, his nighttime visitor slowly forgotten as he focuses on the tasks of the day.

\------

As the next few weeks go by, however, Severin notices more of his vegetables disappearing. Never in any large quantity, but rather in small increments every night. He loses a prized zucchini that he’d been planning on using in a bread, a few plump bean pods that had been one day shy of being plucked from the stems, more cabbages than he cares to think about as they get bigger and fuller, and it even looks like his pansies have been munched on. Severin puzzles over the problem for some time; he’s reluctant to take any sort of drastic measures to keep his visitor out—after all, his home _is_ encroaching on the forest—but he’s hesitant to let this veggie theft continue. The little bugger is taking all his best crops.

Finally, he decides that trying to catch the creature in the act is his best bet. Maybe if he can startle it away while it’s in his garden, then he’ll be able to save his plants.  
He sets up a lawn chair and a few blankets by the side of his house, nestled under a large overhanging awning he’d set up shortly after moving in. There, he has a clear view of his garden, and a place he can stake out in over-night to wait for his visitor. 

With a flashlight in hand, he readies himself for his vigil the next night, intent on catching the thief. He has a thermos full of coffee with him when he settles down in his chair and as the hours pass by, the night growing deeper around him, he sips at it.

But the caffeine only keeps him up for so long. He checks his wristwatch as he feels himself starting to crash and finds to his dismay that it’s only four AM. There’s another hour and a half till the break of dawn, at least, and no sign of his visitor thus far. He gives his head a firm shake to try and rouse himself.

Within minutes, he’s asleep, his head lolled back and his mouth slightly open.

\----------

There’s an incessant little chattering coming from somewhere around him, and he vaguely wishes it would stop so he could keep sleeping. It’s probably a woodpecker, or maybe a cricket that’s landed on his shoulder. He is outside, after all.

He jolts awake at that half-conscious thought. Outside. He’s outside. Because he was on a stakeout to catch his visitor. He looks around wildly, confused and dazed for a moment as his sleep-addled brain tries to comprehend what’s happening.

The sky is a light gray, the first few rays of the sun painting the eastern sky with pink and orange spikes. When he squints at his watch he can just barely make out the time: 5:56. Just about dawn, and just about the same time as when he’d last seen the critter in his garden. But what on earth is that _noise_?

Severin scrubs the sleep from his eyes and stands as quietly as he can, straining to listen. It sounds like the chattering is coming from his garden, so he takes his flashlight in hand and slowly— _carefully_ —walks over towards the perimeter of his garden fence. It’s opened in the spot he usually enters by, but he doesn’t have time to wonder over that because the chattering is louder now. He ducks down as low as his worn out legs allows and creeps forward, past the fence and into the garden.

The chattering is more distinct now. It consists of soft clicking noises and gentle coos, chittering and what sounds like…. Giggles? 

He’s more confused than ever as he peers around, his gaze finally settling on the distant row of cabbages and the little creature sitting by the vegetables. _Aha_ , he thinks as he starts to creep forward, _gotcha now_.

His visitor has its back turned to him, and Severin can see the exact moment when it realizes that he’s there. The outline of ears pricking up breaks the early morning gloom as the chattering dies off, and there’s a moment where they’re both suspended in a state of stillness. Then, in a flash, the animal is up and running, fleeing from Severin who’s only vaguely aware that his visitor is running on two legs.

He throws himself into action as well, jogging after it and whooping, trying to startle it away. Only then does he realize the critter’s mistake: there’s no opening on the far side of the fence, just a wall of mesh, and it makes his pace stutter. The poor thing’s gonna run right into the fencing, and sure enough, as he stands there and watches, his visitor barrels straight into the siding and takes that whole side of the fence down.

Severin is quick to flick his flashlight on and run over. He can see the animal writhing around on the ground, one of its legs seemingly caught in a hole of the mesh. The ex-soldier starts cooing out soothing words before he even realizes it, slowing his pace as he approaches.

“Shh, don’t struggle, little one, you’re all tangled up, you’re just gonna make it worse…” He shines his light on his visitor and sees two furred legs, little hooves kicking futilely against the ground. As he drags the light upwards, he sees a tail, turned up in fear and white underneath. A deer, then. And a young one, at that. The poor thing is small. The beam of light continues further up, and…

Severin drops the flashlight in his shock, uttering a startled “Shit!”. The creature on the ground gives a startled bleat of its own, its efforts to free itself increasing violently for a moment before it grows completely still, shaking and breathing shallowly.

With a trembling hand, Severin bends down and picks his flashlight back up to shine it on the visitor. So it wasn’t just a trick of his mind. From the waist down, the little thing is a deer, brown fur mottled with white spots, slender legs ending in delicate dark brown hooves. But from the waist _up_ , the creature is… Human.

It has a pale, hairless torso, its thin arms protecting a head of brown hair. Severin can just barely see the bumps of two little nubbed horns poking up between soft looking deer ears; his estimation from moments before seems to be right. It’s just a fawn, a youngling, but…. Well, shit, he’s never seen a deer like _this_ before.

He stills needs to help it though. He can’t just leave it there, tanged in his garden fence. With even, measured steps, he walks closer to the animal. “Don’t worry,” he murmurs, his voice shaking slightly. “M’gonna help ya, ok? M’not gonna hurt ya. Just… Just gonna free ya from this.” He slowly crouches down beside the creature and catches a glimpse of a startled, white-spotted face peeking at him before his visitor hides against the ground with a wavering bleat.

He sets the flashlight down and very carefully reaches for a furred leg. The animal jumps at the contact, but Severin hushes it softly and gently and stays still for a long moment before starting to move again. He works the mesh free of the critter’s leg and hoof, and as soon as his visitor is untangled, it scrabbles away from him until there’s a considerable amount of space between them. Only then does it look back at the wide-eyed, awe-struck man.

The first thing Severin notices in the light of the dawn is the animal’s big eyes. They’re a warm, soft brown color, and so expressive that it takes Severin’s breath away for a moment. A little black nose twitches as the creature sniffs, probably picking up on his scent. They sit there for what feels like forever before Severin finally, slowly, raises a hand up, offering it up like he would for a cat or a dog. The animal stares at his outstretched hand, then back to his face, and then with a blink of those big eyes, turns on its heel and runs into the safety of the woods.

Severin doesn’t move for quite some time after the fawn disappears, but finally he picks himself up and wipes the dirt off his knees. He gathers up an armful of ripe, plump vegetables as the sun breaks the tops of the trees and deposits the food in a pile at the edge of the woods, an offering for his little visitor. It was his fault, after all, that the poor thing had gotten tangled up like it had. The least he can do is apologize with a few cabbages.

He heads back to his cottage then, his mind full of thoughts and wonders as he pictures that sweet, startled little face. What was his visitor? Would it come back? He hoped so. He’d like to see it again. With a soft sigh, he dresses in fresh pajamas and lays down in his bed, tired and in need of a few hours of sleep. He drifts off with the remembered sound of those gentle little giggles playing in his head.

\---------

When he wakes up, the sun is high in the sky and the day is warm and sweet with the smell of flowers and sunshine. The first thing Severin does when he climbs out of bed is pull on his old boots and trudge across his yard to the edge of the woods. As he gets closer he can see that the pile of vegetables he’d left there is gone now. He smiles to himself, pleased that something—hopefully his little visitor—had received a meal.

He’s about to turn around and head back to his cottage when he notices something lying on the ground. He walks closer and crouches down, peering at the grass; there, right where the vegetables had been, is a chain of daisies, linked together by the stems into a roughly shaped crown.

Severin picks it up, smelling the flowers, and with a smile, places it on the top of his head.

His little visitor will be back. He knows it.


	2. Of Naps and Grapes

Now that he’s met his little visitor—at least, sort of met it—Severin is more than willing to share the spoils of his garden with the strange creature. Every day after he’s done tending to his plants, he picks a fine specimen out of each row of vegetables and leaves the colorful, ripe pile by the edge of the woods, right by his reading tree. By the next morning, the food is always gone, and in its place his visitor leaves behind a new chain of flowers in return. Over the next couple weeks, he’s gifted many more daisy chains, several made out of plush purple clovers, two or three crowns of braided cattails, and even one made of pansies (he has a sneaking suspicion that the pansies came right from his own garden, but he doesn’t mind all that much, even when a few of the delicate flowers have small nibble marks on them). 

He sets each of these gifts along the edges of his cottage’s windowsills as he receives them, right where he can see them when he eats breakfast, or when he lounges around lazily in his overstuffed armchair, or when he gets ready for bed at night. 

Each time he looks at them, he can’t help but smile.

What he really wants, though, is to see the fawn again, but all further efforts prove fruitless. He tries a second stakeout a few nights after that first incident only to have the hours drag along slowly with no sign of the animal; he wakes sometime after dawn, chilled and dewy in his lawn chair, with a tiger lily and a pile of acorns laying in his lap and no recollection of seeing his visitor.

He gives up after that, contenting himself for the moment with their quaint trading. After all, the creature can always find him again if it wants.

\----------

The summer is nearly over, August slowly changing over to September, but it seems as if the season won’t give in without one final huzzah: the first week of the new month proves to be an exceptionally hot one, lending itself to languid, lazy days filled with bright sunshine and the constant drone of insects. There’s little Severin can do in his garden at the moment beyond watering the plants and pruning them as he waits for the autumnal crops to blossom and thrive, so he wiles away his time with short bouts of reading and much longer periods of napping under his favorite tree.

One fine Wednesday afternoon finds him doing just that: lounging around on a blanket in the shade of his big Wych elm, paying more attention to an ant slowly trudging along the soft fibers than to the black and white pages of his book (A Feast for Crows, to be exact; he likes to pretend he’s a deeply cultured man, but why bother with Dostoyevsky when he can be reading about dragons?). The air is warm and dry, the sweet scent of grass and flowering plants all around him; birds are calling out softly to one another, their trilling songs a lulling cadence overlaying the chirping and whirring of crickets and grasshoppers, and soon, the veteran is asleep, adding his own soft snoring to the summertime melody.

He slips easily into a calming, happy dream, a pleasant change from the blindingly bright and startling nightmares he’s accustomed to; in his mind, he’s kneeling in the cool dirt of his garden, busying himself with pulling up fat and ripe carrots from the soil. He’s whistling a song, the one he normally hums to his happy plants, and from behind him he can hear the chatter and coos of his visitor as the animal talks to him. Dream-Severin smiles to himself and hands a carrot over his shoulder without looking back, the fawn taking it from his hand and gently bumping its nub-horns against his back in thanks as it keeps babbling away. He hears the crunch that accompanies the first bite of the root vegetable and then the satisfied chittering of the creature—muffled slightly through the mouthful of food-- and he chuckles to himself. A butterfly catches his attention and he watches with a smile as it flutters towards him and actually lands on his bare leg, right above his knee. It tickles a bit as it walks along his tanned skin, and he can hear his fawn giggling.

What a great dream.

\-----------

But the thing is, it doesn’t totally feel like a dream, not really. There is actually a gentle tickling on his leg and the sensation slowly rouses Severin from his dream and from his sleep. He frowns slightly as he blinks his eyes open, gazing up at the sunlight filtering down through green leaves and staying perfectly still as he tries to shake off his drowsiness and assess his surroundings. Something is definitely crawling over his knee and down his calf, below the line of his junky gardening shorts, and the soft cadence of the faun’s voice—which he’d thought had been nothing more than a product of his dream—sounds like it’s right there next to him.

Very slowly and very carefully he lifts his head up to look down the length of his body, and his heart does a little jump-skip when his gaze lands on the bare back of his faun. The small creature is sitting on bent legs, its soft tail twitching gently in time to its chirps and chitters. When Severin actually pays attention, he notices that the animal is…. Singing. And not just any song: the fawn is singing his song, his gardening song, the one he’d just dreamed about.

He lifts his head a bit higher still and breaks into a grin when he sees that the wee thing is lining his shinbone with the full yellow heads of black-eyed Susans, seemingly unaware that he’s no longer sound asleep. For a long moment Severin simply sits there and watches the fawn work, watches how it gets distracted so easily by a bird flying overhead or a grasshopper disturbing the sea of green as it leaps, watches how each little scene draws a happy gurgle from his visitor and puts a wide smile on that delicate profiled face.

But soon his neck gets sore and tired from being held up, and he figures that now is as good a time as any to try and make contact with the animal again. 

“Hello,” he says quietly, trying to keep his deep voice—normally gruff from long periods of blissful disuse—as gentle and soothing as possible. It still startles the fawn though, and the creature falls flat onto its furred rump when it spins quickly to face Severin.

Those brown eyes are even sweeter than the man remembers, wide-eyed and nervous as the fawn stares at him and he stares back. He moves to prop himself onto his elbows, slowing down his motions when he sees that the animal is starting to tense. 

“It’s alright; I won’t hurt you. Won’t make you run into any more fences, either. Promise.” He can see intelligence in that gaze, a deeper understanding than he thought he’d find, but it doesn’t seem like the fawn can understand what he’s _saying_.

He tries a different approach, raising a hand slowly to point at his own chest. The fawn looks like it’s ready to bolt at any moment, but it doesn’t: it just sits there and follows the path of Severin’s hand with its eyes.

“Severin,” he says, enunciating his name as clearly as he can. The fawn blinks at him, and he tries again, slower this time. “Ssssseeeeevvvvveeeeerrrrrriiiiiiinnnnn.”

Those brown eyes shift from his pointed finger up to his bearded face and back again several times, and when Severin repeats his name once more, he can see the light click on in the creature’s head.

Before he knows what’s happening, the fawn is shifting towards him onto its hands and knees. Severin is the one to startle then, but he stills himself as the animal sniffs at him. It opens its mouth and emits a lilting series of rrr’s and chitters that, after a moment of thought, Severin recognizes as an attempt at his name.

He feels a rush of excitement course through him at that and he sits up even more, grinning at the fawn as it tries his name out again. 

“That’s right, Severin! It’s a bit long, I know… Oh!” He jabs at his chest again and says, “Rin. Rrrrrriiiiiiinnnnnnnn. Rin!”

The fawn wrinkles its nose in concentration, silently mouthing out the new word before attempting it. “Rrrrrrrrrr—rrreeeeeeern?” Frustration darkens its expressive face when it can’t quite form Severin’s nickname the same way he did, and it shuffles closer until their noses are almost touching.

Severin is pretty sure he’s stopped breathing.

“Rrrrrrrrrrrr…….. Rrrriiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnn. R—Riiiirn. R—R—Rirn? Rrrrrin?”

Severin nods excitedly, and the fawn immediately perks up, eyes wide with astonishment that time instead of nerves as its furred deer ears prick up.

“Rrrrrrin? Rrrrin! Rrrin! Rin! Rin! Rin!”

The fawn is beaming, bouncing happily as Severin laughs. “There ya go! Rin! What a smart lil’ critter you are, huh? Christ, I can’t even believe… How about you then, eh?” He takes his finger off his chest and points it at the fawn’s, who looks down at itself before giggling and chattering out what Severin takes to be its name.

“Whoa, slow down there, I don’t speak woodland creature… Rrrr….. Richard? S’your name Richard? Sounds like you’re saying Richard…” 

The fawn shrugs and nods, still smiling, and reaches small hands out to wrap slender fingers around Severin’s wrist. It guides Severin’s hand back to his chest and chirps out, “Rin!”, and then brings it to its own chest to coo, “Richard!”

“Rin and Richard. Lookit that. Sounds like a mighty fine pair of names, if y’ask me.”

Now that they’ve made contact—and Richard’s seen that Severin means no harm—it seems like the little fawn can’t stop talking. It’s babbling away happily as it sits back on its haunches again, scooping up handfuls of the black-eyed Susan heads he’s yet to line Severin’s leg with and showing them to the man. 

Severin, for his part, smiles at the creature and lets out a pleased hum at the flowers. “They are pretty, aren’t they? Y’seem to like ‘em, though I’d wager daisies are your favorite.”

Richard pops a flower-head into its mouth and munches on it as it chirps, very politely offering a flower to Severin. The veteran shakes his head with a warm smile. “No thanks; can’t say I indulge in annuals very often myself. Though I was snackin’ on some grapes earlier.” He looks over to the small plate of food he’d brought out with him and plucks up one of the remaining red grapes, a plump juicy one that immediately catches the eye of the peckish fawn.

“Y’want it? Here ya go, little one, you can have it.”

He holds it out for Richard, who leans in and sniffs tentatively at it before taking it from Severin’s fingers. The fawn eyes the piece of fruit for a long moment, its brow creased with concentration. Severin chuckles, picking up another grape. “Here, see?” He pops it in his mouth and chews it. “Perfectly safe, I promise. Mmm, and sweet, too.”

That seems to be enough to convince Richard, because it pops the grape into its own small mouth right away. Its eyes widen at the burst of flavorful juice on its tongue and it imitates Severin’s pleased hum, leaning over the man and sniffing around for more grapes.

“I thought you’d like it,” he chuckles, picking up the plate and offering it to Richard. The fawn shoves the last three grapes into its mouth all at once, looking like a little squirrel with its stuffed cheeks before it chews and swallows them. It immediately looks at Severin expectantly, and when the man doesn’t produce grapes, Richard pops its mouth open and points at it. 

“Sorry, Richie, no more out here. I’ve got plenty more in the fridge inside, if y’wanna sit here while I go grab ‘em.”

Richard, though, seems to lose interest in its pursuit of fruit then, distracted by a rabbit that’s hopping through the grass some hundred feet away. The little fawn rises onto its feet and wanders off after the animal, singing to itself again and leaving Severin sitting there in a strange mixture of happiness and disappointment. He watches as Richard disappears into the woods, and with a sigh starts to gather up his things. It’s starting to get a bit late in the afternoon, and anyways, tonight is supposed to be pub night; he best start getting ready and walking down to town so he’s not late.

Just as he’s folding up his blanket, though, the remaining black-eyed Susans safely nestled in the folds, he hears a happy bleating from behind. He turns to see Richard trotting towards him from behind the elm, a new crown of blue cornflowers in its hand. Richard stops in front of him, smiling and chirping and holding the flower circlet up until Severin bends down so the little fawn can place the crown on his brow.

“Rin,” Richard coos, warmth in its voice and in its smile, and before it journeys back into the woods, Severin’s little fawn leans in and nuzzles their noses together. “Rin.”

Severin beams, hugging the blanket to his chest as he watches Richard trot off, chuckling and returning the gesture when the fawn stops to wave to him one final time before disappearing between the trees.

“Richard,” he hums, brushing his fingers along the cornflower petals. “Who woulda thought?”


End file.
